


The Name of Sullivan

by afterandalasia



Category: Monsters University (2013)
Genre: Angst, Community: disney_kink, Disappointment, Dysfunctional Family, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Independence, Missing Scene, Sulley Feels, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 12:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst part of being told to leave the Scaring course was telling his father. Of course, that had been the worst part of many things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Name of Sullivan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [radondoran](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radondoran/gifts).



> From a prompt on Disney Kink asking for angst over the winter break for Mike or Sulley. Bill Sullivan's name comes from the scene where we first meet Sulley, but everything about his relationship with his son is conjecture or headcanon.
> 
> The inspiration actually comes largely from the end of the movie, where Sulley admits to Mike that he often feels scared. That gave me feels, and when I have feels they apparently turn into angst fic.

He picked up and put down the phone at least three times before he actually managed to gather himself enough to dial.

"Mom?" His voice cracked. "I need to talk to you."

 

 

The car met him at the front gates. Of course, they would let his family do that. Sulley left his things in his room, but tried to smarten himself up, flattening down the uncontrollable quiff on his forehead as the car approached.

His mother leant across to push open the door, not saying a word to him. Sulley could feel the tension in the air as he slid in, neither the driver nor his father turning round from the front seat to look at him. All that he could see was the coarse hulking shape of his father's back.

"Dad-" he started.

Making the very faintest hushing sound, his mother reached over and squeezed his knee. Sulley had to hunch down slightly to fit in the car, crafted as it was for his father's height. He looked at his hands, clasping and unclasping them on his knees.

His father grunted and indicated something to the driver, and instead of turning left at the next intersection, they turned right towards the edge of the city. Uncertain, Sulley looked back and forth out of the windows at the few houses straggling out to fields.

The minutes ticked slowly past. Finally his father gave another grunt to the driver, who pulled over to the side of the road and parked up. Feeling bile rise in his throat, Sulley stepped out again, hearing the other car doors open.

"James," his father rumbled, "come here."

Slowly, Sulley turned, feeling as if he was shrinking with every move that he made. It was like he was just a few years old again, only knee-high and first learning to growl. His mother looked just as uncomfortable, her slender blue-haired form slightly bent at the shoulders, two arms folded across her chest and two behind.

"Your mother told me what you said, James," said his father. He spoke heavily, each word perfectly laced with enough growl to send shivers down anyone's spine. That was what had made him a top scarer, Sulley knew, the perfect instinct for what would frighten people. "That you are no longer on the Scaring course. Would you care to expand on that?"

The rough hairs along his shoulders bristled in waves, the iridescent black laced with silver now but as long as ever.

Sulley took a deep breath. "Dad-"

"Think very carefully about what you are about to say."

He cringed slightly, then took a deep breath and forced himself to continue. "I was doing okay," he said. "But there was this other guy, and we got into a fight, and Hardscrabble told us both that we couldn't continue, so-"

His father raised one huge paw. He blunted his claws now, finding it easier, but they were still long and hard, and his muscles knotted beneath his skin. "You are a Sullivan, James. Sullivans do not do 'okay'." He split the words into two syllables. "I worked with Abigail Hardscrabble when she was a scarer. I was there when she broke the all-time record. I know her to be a sensible and admirable woman, worthy of my trust. Have you proved yourself such, James?"

Sulley could not meet his father's eyes. "I was going to pass, Dad. You know that I can scare. She tricked me. She-"

He was not looking, did not see the paw that struck him across the cheek. With a grunt, Sulley fell back a step, raising his paws defensively. "Tricked? Dean Hardscrabble does not play tricks, James. You failed her test. You failed me."

"No, I swear, I didn't!" The words just tumbled out as he looked at his father desperately now, still feeling like a child. His father's eyes flashed, teeth bared in one hundred per cent Bill Sullivan sneer. "You know I can be a scarer, Dad, you've taught me for years, and I always-"

"You always took a long time to learn."

It had felt like a long time, even to him. Waiting for his voice to deepen so that his snarls could be good enough. Waiting for his horns to grow in, for his milk teeth to be replaced by his adult ones, for him to get tall enough to be able to build the muscle and bulk out properly. He had listened to his father's roars for years, unable to replicate them himself and a failure because of it.

"But I learnt, Dad. I learnt."

His father just gave him a look somewhere between disappointment and disgust. "You have failed, James. You don't deserve the name Sullivan."

 

"Bill," said his mother, but Sulley's father turned with a snarl and a raised paw. She shied back a step, but there was anger in her expression as well as the fear, and she drew herself to her fullest height. Her arms spread slightly, warningly, and her short hair bristled. "You can't talk to him like this."

"You coddled him too much, Marcy," he replied. Sulley looked between them, not knowing what he could say. "This is why he's weak. Three generations of top-rank scarers, and now-!"

He waved his hand angrily towards Sulley, who felt his eyes starting to sting.

"Dad, I'll find a way back in," he said. "Or there's FearTech. I can be a scarer, you know that I can do it."

"Do I, James?"

"Damnit, Dad, I can do this!" Sulley stepped forward, even as his father whirled to face him. "You just need to give me a chance!"

This time the strike was harder, knocking him to the ground. "You will not talk to me like that!" His father roared. It seemed to make the trees rumble, more leaves scattered to the ground around Sulley. "I have given you plenty of chances, and you have not taken them! You - have - failed!"

The silence in the wake of the words was deafening, and Sulley lay on the ground tasting blood in his mouth from where his teeth had cut into his lip. He reached up to touch his cheek gently, testing for a bruise, then drew himself to his feet again. His father had turned away, hulking back towards the car, but his mother did not leave. She looked round to Sulley, then stepped close and touched his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Jimmy," she said. "I thought that you wanted to be a scarer, and your father... I thought he knew what he was doing. You always wanted to be a scarer when you were a child."

"I still do. I'll do it, Mom, it doesn't matter how. I just wish..." Sulley looked up at his father's retreating back. There were so many things that he wanted to say: that he wished his father cared, that he wished he had not worn his brash attitude. But he had no choices between the carelessness that he feigned and the fear that his father made him feel. He wished that he had not gotten into the fight with that stupid Mike Wazowski. All that he said aloud was: "I wish that he remembered that he's retired from scaring."

You don't have to do scaring, his father had always said, you have to live it. Sulley had tried to believe it, tried to be a scarer all of his time, but he had not been able to live it. It was the one thing which he had actually learnt from the seminars which he had attended: that scaring was a job to be done. Something that could be taught. Not something to live.

"I'll get a lift back to the university," he said, and from the twitch of his father's ears he knew that it was loud enough to be audible. It was never as if Christmas was that much fun anyway. "And I'll make my own name there."


End file.
